Human Free Will & God’s Sovereignty

By Romeo B. Macale, PhD

Human Free Will and Responsibility

 

Motivation of Free Will

The origin or motivating element of human free will is difficult to determine even by those philosophers who dealt rigorously with it. For Augustine, he attributed free will to have been the cause of evil actions (Evis, 2014c). However, free will has been made to give man the tools to do right before God. Without free will, doing what is right is not possible. God is good. He created everything for His pleasure (Clark, 2006). For a man to glorify God, man needs a piece of equipment to do righteousness in a world of wickedness. Free will enables man to do good things for God if he chooses to. In the absence of free will, rendering pleasure to God is impossible. Evil is the only alternative to a good choice – an act that never produces good things for God (Sproul, 2001). Its existence is not voluntary but necessary since choosing to please God cannot be done without its opposite. While free will is God’s gift, it must be used to do good things for God.

Voluntariness and Necessity

The term “will” comes from the Latin word “voluntas,” which is equivalent to voluntary in English (Couenhoven, 2007). Augustine argues every free will is voluntary. When a person acts without external compulsion, he always acts voluntarily or willingly. If his action is controlled or propelled by an external force, it is no longer voluntary; thus, he acted out freely since he did it out of his free will (Sugrue, 2020). Free will is only voluntary when no outside force pushes or stops it (Boettner, 1932). When a person acts contrary to his choice, he does something out of necessity, or some external forces override his free will. Any action done due to necessity is not voluntary (Berkhof, 1996). Therefore, such an act is exercised not through his choices but outside the bounds of his free will.

Origin of Free Will

When a person exercises his free will so that he acts freely on something, he is not considered the cause of that free will. According to Augustine, a person does not author free choice or things that prompt to start action (Berkhof, 1996; Bo & Fei, 2015). Free choice is exercised by the person for the purpose of obtaining good (Couenhoven, 2007). Although most decisions are not good, Augustine argues, man’s desire was for the good before the choice was made, for good is associated with rightness (Emecz, 2023). God is identified as good and does what is good; He does not do evil (Boettner, 1932). Hence, the origin of free will is God, Who has gifted man with it.

What Is Evil?

The question of evil is a crucial issue in theology and philosophy. Every person notices that evils constantly occurring every day. Many wonder where evil comes from or what evil is. Does evil exist, or is evil a thing or substance that will account for its existence? Does God or man originate evil? Why is there evil?

At the outset, evil is not easy to define and explain. R. C. Sproul defines evil as “nothing” (Sproul, 2001). Evil is not a thing or substance. It does not exist (Sproul, 2001). Yet, evil is genuine, and everybody experiences it. Evil is like a human parasite (Ministries, 2015; Sproul, 2001). It dwells in human beings. When a person dies, the parasite dies with him. Evil terminates when the person dies (Sproul, 2001).

Evil is an action. It has no existence; neither is evil possessed with an independent existence (Ministries, 2015). Evil is an action demonstrated by the behavior or attitude of human beings. Human actions can be evil or good. Evil is the opposite of good. Evil is the absence of good. In Latin, the “absence of good” is termed “privatio bono,” meaning the absence, lack, or deprivation of good (Sproul, 2001). For instance, darkness is the absence of light, cold is the absence of heat, and evil is the absence of good. Thus, evil has no existence. Therefore, it does not exist. Hence, evil is nothing (Sproul, 2001).

Another Latin word for evil is “Negatio,” which means the opposite of good (Sproul, 2001). A classic example is the attributes of God. He can be described as what God is not. God is not finite; He is not unjust. God is not unmerciful; He is not powerless. God is not limited (Sproul, 2001). Thus, God is not evil. Evil is a negation of what is. Accordingly, evil is the negation or opposite of good. Evil as negation has no independent existence. It has no ontological reality (Sproul, 2001). As mentioned earlier, evil is just a parasite. Whenever man lives, evil is dependent on him. In other words, evil lives together with man. Hence, evil has no independent existence.

Nevertheless, evil is nothing (Sproul, 2001). Yet, evil is not an illusion. An illusion has no reality and bears no effects (Sproul, 2001). The universe demonstrates evils occurring every day (Vasquez, 2020). Evil is an actual phenomenon experienced by humans. Evil comes in all sorts of forms, such as pains and suffering – humans hurting other humans, animals devastating humans and things, and natural calamities like storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and others happening since time immemorial (Sproul, 2001). Illnesses, diseases, sufferings, and others are experienced by humans, animals, and other creatures, and they are reckoned as evils (Smith, 2020).

Free Will and Responsibility

The motivation for free will comes from God. God created man’s free will when He created the first human being so that the latter could serve God willingly and voluntarily (Nash, 2023). God created man for His pleasure, and the latter’s job is to serve Him in return (Pontifex, 1955). In other words, free will indicates man’s ability to respond to God’s command. Hence, man’s responsibility is indelibly enshrined in his free will. So, without free will, man is not responsible for anything he wills or does, or he will not nor does not do. However, the same free will has the power to not respond to or please God. Augustine claimed that it exactly was what occurred to Adam and Eve; they chose to disobey God’s one and only law or command – the prohibition from not eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (Peterson, 2023). Thus, the first human beings fell into sin and thereby became sinners by choice. They became sinners because they chose to disobey their Creator (Morrell, 2013). Neither God nor sin made them sinners (Sproul, 2001). Their free will basically led them to rebel against God (Berkhof, 1996). Consequently, they became sinners, and all their children and descendants – all humanity became sinners by inheritance.

Further, early in his life, Augustine contends that free will depends on man (Fitzgerald, 1999). It is not caused, attributed, or corroborated by external factors or forces (Nash, 2023). When man wills, the decision comes entirely from himself, not from factors or forces outside of him (Hines, 2022). Nonetheless, Augustine repudiated this free will argument when he reached maturity in his Christian doctrine. He dismissed his earlier free will argument as an exercise in futility on the grounds of God’s doctrine of grace (Hwang et al., 2014). Augustine won the hatred of his opponents by claiming that he was inconsistent since he promoted free will earlier. He rejected it by replacing it with the doctrine of grace, otherwise known as predestination (Lutzer, 1998; Packer, 2012).

In response, Augustine argued that he did not repudiate free will, contending that man’s free choice is the lynchpin and main ingredient of human responsibility (Vasquez, 2020). Free will does not contradict God’s grace. There is no contradiction in the wisdom of God (Packer, 2012). The paradox of dichotomy only occurs with humans because of their limited or lack of understanding (Bo & Fei). Human free will and God’s grace are not contradictory but are two sides of God’s sovereignty. Thus, man’s free will and God’s sovereignty are friends and not enemies, in the words of the prince of preachers, Charles H. Spurgeon (J. 1. Packer). Consequently, the contradiction is an illusion and a figment of man’s imagination.

Voluntary and Necessity

As mentioned earlier, free will is voluntary as far as physical constraints are concerned. Augustine argues that man wills freely, decides whatever he thinks best, and wills whichever he chooses (Samples, 2012). In the absence of external influences or forces, one cannot see somebody constraining his will or stopping him physically from choosing and acting on what he desires (Prahlow, 2014). As judged by human experience, he is free to will what he chooses. Within this parameter, physically and scientifically, man exercises his free will freely (Schlesinger, 1977).

Nonetheless, Augustine admits that man chose what he chose necessarily and would not choose otherwise. Man can only will what he chooses according to the nature of his free will (Schwartzbeck, 2017). In other words, man cannot choose other alternatives since he is limited to his preconceived choice. That is, since man chose to sin and became a sinner subsequently, he can only choose things that are pleasing and delightful to himself (Sugrue, 2020). Man cannot will to choose God because such a choice is contrary to his nature and desire. To choose God after his fall into sin, Augustine argues, he must need the grace to remove him from sin. Unless and until this happens, it is impossible for man to choose God freely (Berkhof, 1996; Boettner, 1932). In other words, human free will remains free and voluntary despite man’s sin. However, his decisions incline absolutely to what appeals to his flesh, and such action arising from his choice unavoidably becomes necessary (Clark, 2006).

Will and Action

In the context of Augustine’s philosophy, free will and action go together. When a man makes a choice, his action follows to act on his choice (Couenhoven, 2007). As mentioned earlier, man cannot do away with not acting upon his choice. Man’s free will controls his actions (Evis, 2014c). In other words, man’s free will determines or predestinates his action. Though free choice and liberty appear different on the surface, they are linguistically similar in meaning and import (Evis, 2014b). However, Augustine’s language, free choice, is man’s free will to choose what appeals to him. At the same time, liberty has to do with choosing God after grace has worked in man’s heart (Evis, 2014a). Thus, free will is man’s choice to choose sinful choices. Liberty is man’s free will to choose God after grace has regenerated his heart.

Knowledge and Responsibility

In Augustine’s mind, knowledge is the consciousness of sin. In contrast, responsibility demonstrates man’s free will (Clark, 2006). Knowledge is linked with man’s rebellion against God’s command. The man, Adam, fell into sin because of his awareness of God’s command against eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (Emecz, 2023). This rebellion was realized because he exercised his free will to choose to disobey God. After sin, the man was convicted through his conscience or knowledge of sin, thereby becoming responsible for his disobedience (Dyson, 1998). Thus, man deserves punishment and cannot avoid it from his Creator – the God of justice. Accordingly, Augustine holds that without grace, man is forever punished in Hell.

Fall of Man

Augustine teaches that man fell into sin entirely since he exercised his free will to disobey God’s command. When man fell into sin, there is no part of his being that was not corrupted by his rebellion as a result (Sproul, 2001). Man’s fall into sin was total and absolute, contrary to Pelagius’ doctrine, where he argued that man’s fall into sin was partial and the effect of his fall was just confined to himself as an individual (Kaye & Thomson, 2001). All his children did not inherit sin. Hence, humankind is, basically, good and uncorrupted. Consequently, man does not need God for salvation.

However, such Pelagian doctrine is evil in the eyes of Augustine, claiming that man is utterly hopeless apart from God’s grace (Samples, 2012; Sugrue, 2020). Man can only be rescued from condemnation in Hell through God’s grace by faith in Jesus Christ. This hopelessness is not just partial or an injury but deadly (Peterson, 2023). To restore man to God, He offered His son Jesus Christ to die at the moss to pay the justice of God (Jenkins, 2012). Unless and until grace is applied in man, he is beyond salvation.

Sin and Evil

Augustine’s doctrine of sin and evil is consistent with his problem of evil (Couenhoven, 2007). He contends sin became possible because man was created with free will. This free will has the ability to respond to suggestion, delight, and consent. Through these three stages, man disobeyed God’s command (Clark, 2023). The serpent suggested to Eve the good of the forbidden fruit, and she was delighted to have it. And finally, the woman consented or agreed to get it. The reason is, Augustine argues, that Eve chose to eat the fruit, for she was led to believe that the forbidden tree was good (Mink & Burleigh, 1959). And free will is oriented to good, held Augustine (Morrell, 2013). Thus, whatever is good or pleasing, man’s free will chooses the suggestion, delights with it, and consents to it.

Augustine has an explanation for the doctrine of evil. As mentioned earlier, evil is not a substance or a thing. It is nothing. Evil has no ontological being (Sproul, 2001). It is an action. Augustine has two accounts for evil. Firstly, evil is not good. Evil is a privation of good; it is the absence of good. When something is not, then it is evil. Secondly, evil is the negation of good. It means that the opposite of good is evil. Unrighteousness is evil because it is the opposite of righteousness. A murderer is evil because he is the opposite of a non-murderer or a good person (Sproul, 2001).

God’s Sovereignty

 

 

 

Sovereignty and Predestination

Sovereignty is the doctrine that accounts for God’s grace, mercy, and love toward humanity (Berkhof, 1996). Augustine declares that man is a sinner by choice, and he is absolutely helpless and without remedy from the punishment in Hell, apart from God’s grace. God’s grace underlines Augustine’s doctrine of predestination (Boettner, 1932). Augustine argues that any sinner granted with grace is under God’s predestination. Predestination, Augustine points out, is God’s will that saves the sinner and not man’s free will in choosing God (Clark, 2023). When God redeems a person, He quickens from spiritual death and equips man with faith, the sole equipment to trust in Jesus Christ. Man will not and cannot manufacture faith, but God solely gifts it (Clark, 2006). When God picks the sinner from sin, first He works in his heart to regenerate him and then gives him faith to accept Christ. Superficially and scientifically, it appears that man chooses God (Packer, 2012). However, Augustine argues, how can man choose God when his delights are all that appeal to his flesh (Peterson, 2023)? Even just thinking about God is repulsive, irrelevant, and detestable to man’s fleshly appetite. To change this phenomenon is a complete revolution and spiritual (Peterson, 2023). It is only possible through the supernatural work of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit. Apart from God’s sovereignty, grace, and predestination, man is beyond the ambit of God’s redemption (Boettner, 1932).

Election and Foreknowledge

Augustine’s predestination involves election and foreknowledge. The election has the same account as predestination (Boettner, 1932). Election means that God elects or chooses sinners and saves them through grace. Foreknowledge is God’s power in eternity to see who amongst sinners will come to God (Berkhof, 1996). Augustine holds this doctrine early in his life. But when he matures in Christianity, he repudiates such teaching since it implies man’s participation in salvation, which accounts for his free will involvement becoming a lynchpin in salvation (Couenhoven, 2007). It also means that man is good and not evil and corrupt. Accordingly, Augustine holds that in terms of predestination, the sinner’s salvation is entirely God’s work through His grace. As a result, man has no part in salvation (Sproul, 2001). Thus, man goes to Heaven because God saves him. Others go to Hell because they do not delight in God and choose to reject Him.

Determinism, Fatalism and Compatibilism

Augustine did not hold the philosophy of determinism (Rickaby, 1908). Determinism is a philosophy that holds that every event or action has been predetermined before it occurs. It defers from predestination since the latter is founded in God’s sovereignty (Soteriology101, 2023). Determinism is rooted in blind forces, not attributed to God. Fatalism is an offshoot of determinism (Houdmann, 2018a). Augustine does not subscribe to fatalism either (Dyson, 1998).

Compatibilism is the middle ground between determinism and human free will. It is a reconciliation between human freedom and fatalism or determinism (Houdmann, 2018b, 2018c). Some argue that Roman Catholicism slides from Augustine’s doctrine of grace into compatibilism, holding that man’s free will is involved in man’s redemption (Nash, 2023). It means that for man to attain salvation, he must do good works to add to or complete God’s grace given to him (Rickaby, 1908). Thus, God’s grace is not adequate enough for man’s salvation. It must be added to man’s good works, of which man’s free will underpins and completes man’s salvation.

 

Objections to Predestination

Pelagius’ Objections to Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination

Pelagius and his followers make two significant objections. Firstly, when God created man, he was formed good (Brown, 2017). Secondly, when man fell into sin, sin or evil did not affect his free will (Benjamin & Hackstaff, 1964). Adam’s sin was just confined to him. Consequently, Adam did not pass his sin to his children or the entirety of humankind (Bettenson & Knowles, 1972). As a result, every human being is essentially good. Hence, many preachers, pastors, Christians, theologians, philosophers, and scientists believe that human beings are just “injured” or “ill”; thus, they can still cooperate with or reject God’s grace.

Augustine’s Response

In answering these two main objections, Augustine argues, firstly, that when man fell into sin, man’s free will affected not only his free will and freedom of choice but every part of him – body and soul (Bourke, 1964). The whole of man, sin corrupted his intellect, emotion, and will (Dyson, 1998). Nothing is left in man that is untouched and not ruined. Thus, man was not just injured or ill by sin but became spiritually dead before God (Bourke, 1964). To Augustine, unless God intervenes and does something to rescue man from depravity, he is irremediable, unrecoverable, and unredeemable (Clark, 2006). No human remedy can ever make or restore man to God. The only hope that can be done is by God’s grace, Augustine holds, to save man from eternal Hell (Hines, 2022). Therefore, man is unable to cure himself from sin and evil apart from God’s grace.

The second objection, that man is essentially good, as Pelagius contended, is utterly groundless biblically, theologically, and philosophically (DrCraigVideos, 2017). Augustine holds that the Bible clearly points out that Adam’s sin was passed down to his children and descendants. Every person or infant entering this universe bears Adam’s sin; thus, he is sinful and evil to the core. No human being does righteously by nature (Clark, 2023). The allegation of the semi-Pelagians that man can contribute good works to his salvation is massively unavailing, for all the works of man, including the so-called “good acts,” are filthy rags and evil in God’s sight (Couenhoven, 2007). To be redeemed from sin, a man must stop doing good works but instead seek God’s mercy and grace (Berkhof, 1996). Therefore, man is useless, hopeless, and unredeemable apart from God’s grace.

 

 

Resolution

The conflict between human free will and God’s responsibility is not contradictory or irreconcilable. It could be a paradox, but it has a real solution. Neither is it a problem to God that its solution is beyond the reach of man’s mind. Since God is omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign, such a paradox is only valid to man’s mind because his reason and thinking are limited (Luke 1:37). Whatever poses a problem to man, it is not an issue to God. God thinks and operates differently and way above man’s ways (Isaiah 55:8). God can even turn evil ways to work in His favor (Romans 8:28). Thus, human choice and God’s sovereignty may signal a contradiction to man’s intellect but to God, they are compatible; they are friends and not enemies. Therefore, God predestinates sinners for salvation (Romans 8:29), but at the same time, man chooses to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour (John 1:12; Romans 10:13).

 

 

 

References

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